Giant Ecosphere

I bought this fishbowl for half off online and decided to try keeping Opae Ula shrimp in it. I've had it set up for several weeks with inert sand, some lace rock, a piece of Seiryu, and some Chaetomorpha macro algae. I'm using R/O water with marine salt at half the normal amount to create a brackish environment which mimics the anchialine pools they come from in Hawaii. They're endemic to Hawaii and are also called Volcano Shrimp and Super Shrimp because they have up to a 20 year lifespan and can survive in nearly freshwater to more saline than the ocean and a wide range of temperatures. These are the shrimp that you get when you buy an ecosphere. I used to have one of these and believed the company who makes them when they said it was a perfectly balanced sealed environment, when in reality they are slowly starved and suffocated to death. This reminds me of a giant ecosphere on a pedestal only this one is open. I learned more about these shrimp from http://www.petshrimp.com/hawaiianredshrimp.php and bought 60 from Cookymonster which were delivered last week. They all survived the trip and I haven't found a single one yet that has died. I'm not filtering the water, I only have a 50W titantium heater and it sets in an East facing window so gets a couple hours of morning sun. I'm monitoring the temperatures and so far the bowl has only gone up 2 degrees when the sun shines on it. They're more active and swim more than any other dwarf shrimp that I've had. They seem to be constantly moving. I'm not feeding them anything, the macroalgae and whatever grows on the rocks will be their food for now anyway. Overall I'm very please with how it's turned out so far. These may be the easiest aquatic pet there is.

The chaetomorpha seems to be doing well and I'm indebted to Mustafa from the above mentioned website for selling me some of his. He said this is the only plant he's found that does well in this half salinity brackish water which is ideal for these shrimp. There are other chaetomorphas readily available for saltwater tanks but they don't survive in these brackish conditions and end up polluting the tank and killing the shrimp. This chaeto is much finer and softer than any other chaeto that I've seen. It should provide a good food source for the shrimp.

Thanks, you can check with Cookymonster but I think he may be out now. There's also someone on ebay from Hawaii selling 90 for $65 including shipping so they're less than a buck apiece. Not bad compared to the $15 I've had to pay per Cardinal. And then there's some out of Asia for as much as $400 per shrimp.

Great job on doing your research with that specific Chaetomorpha. How long have you been running this setup? What kind of maintenance are you doing? Nice work!

Thank you. I've had this going for a little over a month now. The shrimp have been in it for a little over 5 days. The beauty of these little guys is the minimal maintenance. All I have to do is replace any evaporated water with R/O water. Their water never needs to be replaced! No water changes ever! Their natural environment is stagnant water so no water movement is what they prefer. In their natural pools, the deeper layers don't even have any oxygen and they can survive in these anaerobic conditions which is why some call them Super Shrimp. They also prefer to have dense numbers, I could have had this amount of shrimp in a bowl 1/3 the size of this one with no problems. They are ideally suited to a nano tank. The only thing these guys are sensitive to is ammonia which will kill them pretty quickly but then this kills most aquatic life. So you have to be careful about feeding and what kind of plants you introduce. Mustafa who I mentioned above says that no plants should be used other than the chaetomorpha I currently have in their bowl.

That stuff is always said about this species of shrimp, but I can't say I believe it.

I can't believe they would be happy in an environment with no water motion, filtration, ect.

They are hardy, sure, but why not treat them like a red cherry (that enjoys healthy brackish water)?

I'm not saying I look down on your shrimp keeping, but I wish they weren't kept in ecospheres, where they eventually die of ammonia poisoning or starve, or forced to endure no water changes.

In Hawaii they live in poor conditions, but nature does water changes with rain and evaporation.

MABJ's iDevice used for this message :p

I agree with you on the ecosphere and their water does evaporate and I play rainman by adding R/O water but they do not do well with water movement according to an expert on keeping these shrimp, Mustafa, from the above mentioned site. I suppose you could do filtration but if it isn't necessary why over complicate things? If stagnant water is what they have evolved to live in then they aren't going to do well if you change that.

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